2–3.  Truman Judson Gilbert was born in Dorr, Allegan County, Michigan, on Friday, March 17, 1911, and died in Danville, Vermilion County, Illinois, on November 27, 1962. He was buried in block M, section 12, of Mount Everest Cemetery, Kalamazoo. Dorothy Aileen Galbreath was born in South Haven, Van Buren County, Michigan, U.S.A., on Thursday, March 19, 1914, and died in Lanham, Prince Georges County, Maryland, U.S.A., on December 1, 2002. They were married in Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, on Tuesday, June 30, 1936. She took the name Dorothy Galbreath Gilbert. He is the son of Walter Joshua and Primrose (Judson) Gilbert. She is the daughter of George Levi and Eva Marie (Youngblood) Galbreath. They had five children:

Truman J. Gilbert 1930 High School Picture

Truman Gilbert was the youngest of four children. The family moved to Kalamazoo in about 1922 and lived near Western Michigan College (now University) which he attended for about two years. It is here that he met Dorothy Galbreath. While at Western he was a member of their tennis team. He was a tall, handsome man: between 6'2" and 6'3" tall, with blue eyes and wavy hair. He could not afford to finish college but did retain some beautiful architectural pencil sketches from one of his classes, and related several times his frustration in one class at being docked a significant number of points on an essay exam for misspelling a simple word in haste.

Dorothy and Truman Gilbert June 30, 1936

As a wedding present, Dorothy's mother gave them her equity in her small bungalow at 1930 East Cork St., later 2002 East. Cork, in Milwood, a southern suburb of Kalamazoo. The house was on two and one half acres of orchard, half of a five-acre plot that Eva purchased in April, 1925, from the Fischer family. It was in this house that Dorothy's grandmother, Margaret Lydia (Bortle) Tenbroeck died. With the help of college friends, Truman and Dorothy refurbished the house and moved in after their wedding, living there until their first son, Walter, was born. They then bought a house on Egleston St. in Kalamazoo and lived upstairs and rented the downstairs portion. During this time, Dorothy's mother died. They also continued to renovate the house at 1930 Cork St. having the painting done by Harry Marlette in exchange for their cow.

In this late depression time, Truman worked as a carpenter, finding work for a while in Alabama and later at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was called for service in WW II but failed the physical in Detroit because of a grapefruit-size goiter he had at the time. From the time they moved to 2002 East Cork Street until some time after the second World War, they always had a pen of chickens and at least one cow. Truman built a small barn and chicken coop for the animals and provided most of their care. The cow provided milk and enough butter to have excess which was sold to neighbors. Hand churning several gallons of cream was a task often performed by the children. After the butterfat had coagulated, it was extracted from the buttermilk with cheese cloth and formed into one-pound pats. It was then stored in a large, old, commercial-style chest freezer in the basement. The buttermilk was bottled for drinking. Often the cow was bred for a calf which was used for meat for the family. The chickens provided eggs and were also eaten. Before chicken feeds were supplemented with vitamins and minerals, eggs shells were saved, baked, ground, and mixed with their feed. The baking operation produced a stench usually sufficient to drive the family from the house.

During this time, the early 1940s, Truman acquired an exterminating company from A. J. Barker. Dorothy had dated the Barker's son, Ernest, until he died of a floor burn from playing basketball. They remained close and when Barker wanted to retire from his business, he offered it to Truman. Truman renamed it "Gilbert's Exterminating Service" and operated it out of the family home. This entailed storing hundreds of pounds of DDT, canisters of other poisons, and carboys of sulphuric acid in the workshop building that Truman built about 50 feet behind the house. Fortunately, no accidents ever occurred with these materials except the time when someone who was assisting in the preparation for a fumigation opened a carboy of acid while standing down wind—the vapors ate large holes in his pants. Occasionally, when explaining his father's occupation at "show and tell" in school, one of the children would take a small can of pyrethrin and describe how it was used. Then, with the class thoroughly impressed by the toxicity of the material, he would eat a pinch of it, much to the horror of the teacher and class. It would then be explained that pyrethrin is harmless to humans.

After the war, Truman returned to carpentry and built several houses in the Kalamazoo area, including one for his sister, Iva Mohl, and her husband. The shop building was often used to make items for these homes, usually those requiring finer woodworking. This shop was about 20' by 24' and had wide workbenches along the two long walls, except for a break at one end for a garage door. A large radial arm saw was built into the middle of the complete workbench and there was a small door in the walls at the end of the workbench so the very long lumber could be slid in and cut. The shop also had a fine table saw built of oak by Truman's father, Walter, who, with his wife, had lived in a house built between the main house and the shop. Walter also built a wood lathe and many smaller, specialized hand tools. There was also a drill press. The facilities were such that the children had ample opportunity to learn basic woodworking and other skills. Several go-carts were assembled here, and son Walter used it several times for overhauling automobiles. The shop stood until 197_ when it was dismantled during a family reunion, having degenerated significantly from neglect.

After having been his own contractor and carpenter for a few years, Truman went to work for the Ray Stevens Construction Company as their field superintendent. In this capacity he supervised the construction of many buildings, schools, churches, etc., in southern Michigan. The company failed in November, 1958, which had a serious physical and psychological effect on Truman. He was unemployed for eight weeks, refusing to apply to the Miller-Davis Construction Company which had forced the Stevens company out of business. However, Miller-Davis eventually offered him a job, which he accepted, because other attempts at finding work had not been fruitful. His annual salary with Stevens had been $11,000, a princely sum at the time, but he was offered only $8,000 by Miller-Davis. They had no work for him for the first several months and then he was sent to various construction sites out of town where he could return home only infrequently. He died of a heart attack while building a Holiday Inn in Danville, Illinois. He did not appear at work on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and was found dead in bed at his rooming house.

His son, Walter, relates the following about the death of his father.

For several months before my father's death, I had the same terrifying dream about twice a week. In it I could see him sleeping in a single bed against a wall in an unfamiliar room with the nitroglycerine pills that he took for his heart condition on the nightstand beside the bed. He awakens at night with severe chest pains and reaches for his medication which, due to the darkness and the severity of the pain, he knocks onto the floor. He thinks or says, "Oh dear, dammit!" and dies quickly, being unable to move to retrieve the fallen bottle.

Every time I would have this dream, I would awaken completely shaken, and would not be able to return to sleep for some time. After his death, the dream never recurred.

Dorothy Galbreath Gilbert 1966 Passport Photo

Dorothy was born on the Dye farm in Allegan county where her mother, Eva Galbreath, was living at the time with her parents. When labor began, Eva simply went up to her bedroom and called down to her mother to bring up some hot water. A doctor was summoned after the birth and he recorded the event at the court house, giving the name of "Bertha Galbreath". Her name as recorded in the family Bible was Dorothy Allene Galbreath, and the name she always used was Dorothy Aileen. The court house records were changed to Dorothy Aileen Galbreath in 1963 when the discrepancy was discovered.

Dorothy lived on the Dye farm for her first several years. She remembers typical farm scenes: the great rows of corn, the fruit trees, the pigs and piglets, and the large watering trough for horses in front of the house. The Dye house is eight miles north of South Haven and was still there in 1982.

The family left the Dye farm where they were share croppers and moved to the octagon house nearer South Haven. Dorothy remembers climbing up the dark, carpeted stairs to the attic, with all of its old house smells and shadows so frightening to a young girl. Here she would look out the windows on the eight sides of the cupola.

From there, the family moved to the big house on Phoenix road. This was a large, elegant, red house with a windbreak of stately evergreen trees with their soft cushion of needles underneath. There was trumpet vine on the side of the house that attracted hummingbirds in the summer. There Dorothy had a pet hen named Biddy who followed her around whenever she was outdoors. She also had a pet pig. It was a runt and had been raised in the house until strong enough to join its littermates.

This house had a smaller tenant house down the lane and Dorothy's Uncle Roy and his family lived there. The house also had a smoke house made out of the stump of a huge, grey tree. This is where the hams were cured.

The big house had a large parlor. One Christmas the family blocked the door with large sacks of beans, one of that year's crops, so that Dorothy could not get in. On Christmas eve, sleigh bells were clandestinely rung outdoors, the sacks of beans were removed, and the doors opened to reveal a fully decorated Christmas tree, which everyone assured young Dorothy had been left by Santa Claus.

The family moved to Jericho, half way between South Haven and Bangor. It is here that Dorothy started school. The soil there was very sandy, and down a lane behind the house was a brook with a sandy bottom and a beechnut tree leaning over it. When the nuts were ripe, Dorothy would crack them open and pick out the meats with the patience only available to children. Sandburs abounded in the area, and since she often went barefoot, there were many places she could not visit. Once she found herself trapped in the middle of a sandbur patch and had to be rescued by her grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Youngblood.

Dorothy G. Gilbert 1956 — age 42 Her favorite picture

Dorothy started school at Jericho School, a small building of tan brick. It was a one-room school house with the same teacher teaching all classes. Dorothy was very good at spelling and was looking forward to showing off in front of the class but there was never a spelling time. When she finally asked the teacher why there was no spelling, she was told that spelling was held after the afternoon recess. Until that time, she had always assumed that afternoon recess was the end of the school day and had gone home. After that, she stayed for spelling. The teacher would work with each class in turn, giving commands such as "Seventh grade, turn, stand, pass" to which the seventh grade students would turn in their seats, stand, and on the command "pass", would march to the front of the room to the recitation bench. The fact that one group was in the front reciting never seemed to distract the others who were in their seats studying.

At Christmas, names would be drawn, and the entire community would gather for a party with a Santa Claus that would call out each person's name and deliver presents.

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After her daughter, Mary Ellen, died, Dorothy received grief counseling from Hospice. During this, she expressed the desire to eventually move to Maryland to be closer to her eldest son, Walter. She was advised to move while she could still adapt to the area, not when she was incapacited. On March 13, 1989, she called Walter and Betty and announced that she was moving to Maryland. They bought her a condominium in Greenbelt less than a mile from their home in Lanham and advised her to buy a car with air conditioning. In September, 1990, she moved.

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On November 10, 2002, Dorothy suffered a stroke. A CAT scan showed it was her second. She was hospitalized for three days then moved to a nursing home for rehabilitation. She was seriously demented: she should recognize familiar people but did not comprehend where she was. She died there about two weeks later. Per her wishes, she was cremated and no ceremony was held.